Joy Malone learns this the night she sees a stranger with all-black eyes across a crowded room—right before the mystery boy tries to cut out her eye. Instead, the wound accidentally marks her as property of Indelible Ink, and this dangerous mistake thrusts Joy into an incomprehensible world—a world of monsters at the window, glowing girls on the doorstep, and a life that will never be the same.

Now, Joy must pretend to be Ink’s chosen one—his helper, his love, his something for the foreseeable future…and failure to be convincing means a painful death for them both. Swept into a world of monsters, illusion, immortal honor and revenge, Joy discovers that sometimes, there are no mistakes.

Somewhere between reality and myth lies…

THE TWIXT

Quick & Dirty: This had a very unique and different premise. I really enjoyed the book as a whole, but the pacing wasn’t the best and I wasn’t a huge fan of the characters.

Joy Malone is 16 years old and in the last year her life fell apart. Her mom left and moved to L.A. to live with a younger guy. Joy gave up on her dream to become an Olympic gymnast, and her brother left for college. She now lives with her dad and she gets pretty lonely at times. One night her best friend convinces her to go to a dance club, and Joy’s life is changed forever. A mysterious boy with all black eyes tries to cut out her eyes, but he doesn’t succeed. Instead he ends up leaving her with his signature mark.

Ink is a creature from The Twixt. The Twixt is another dimension filled with magical creatures and there is a delicate balance that must be maintained between the two worlds. The creatures from The Twixt mark humans as their property and are therefore responsible for them. Ink and his sister Inq are in charge of marking the humans for the creatures. It turns out that Joy has something called “The Sight” where she is able to see the creatures and Ink was trying to protect her by taking her eyes, but he missed. Now that she bears Ink’s mark she has to prove to all the creatures that her and Ink are lovers, because Ink isn’t allowed to make mistakes. If they can’t prove that Joy’s mark was intentional then they could both forfeit their lives.

Joy is our heroine in the story and I had mixed feelings about her. She has a really whiny voice at parts in the book and her bad attitude got on my nerves. She kept feeling bad for herself and I felt that in that aspect she never really got any better. Now with that being said, there were things that I really liked about her as well. She is sweet, caring, loyal, and independent. She is pretty good at taking care of herself, but not too stubborn to ask for help if she needs it. For me, I would have to say that she was just a middle of the road character for me. I really wanted to love her, but she was just a little too irritating for me.

Ink is a very interesting character. He has the image of a human, but he is missing things like finger nails and a belly button. For me he was a very hard character to connect to, he hasn’t had a lot of interaction with humans before so everything with Joy is new. The problem is that because he is not human he doesn’t have certain characteristics that come naturally to humans. I realize that is what the author was going for when she created him but instead of it helping me to understand him better, it made me not like him as much. He is the love interest in the book and I really wanted to swoon over him, but I just couldn’t.

Now I know that this review has sounded pretty negative so far, but to be honest, I actually did like the book. The plot was fun and intriguing and it kept me interested the whole way through. The idea was very unique and different than anything else I have ever read. The romance was actually very sweet and well developed. I love the cover, it is very captivating and fits the book perfectly. The pacing was a little off for me; there were scenes that really seemed to drag and others that I would have liked more detail. I think that would have helped it flow better. So yes, there were some parts that were disappointing, but overall I still thought it was a fun read. I do look forward to the next book in the story and I hope that some of the things I didn’t like about this one will be different in the next installment. I would recommend this to fans of YA Fantasy. I think it would be an enjoyable read for you.

Notable Scene:

Turning around, Joy squinted. The sky outside was a patchwork of blue-orange low-glow. The wind was blowing through the backyard. She could hear it whistling outside. Maybe a branch was scraping the glass?

There was a long, drawn-out scrrrrrrrrrrrick!

A large shadow with glowing eyes loomed in the dark. The eyes were shaped like arrowheads and fiery, electric white.

Joy stumbled.

The eyes slanted in amusement. There was a scratch at the glass again.

Joy’s back hit the wall, her whole body tingling. The kitchen phone was still on the couch, impossibly far away.

So was her voice. So was her breath. She stared, quivering.

A large palm pressed flat against the glass, thick fingers ending in points. There were only four of them. The hand flexed and dropped into darkness, but the eyes were still there, burning.

Joy blinked her one eye over and over, gripping the edge of the sliding closet door. She couldn’t be seeing what she was seeing. She wanted to hide behind the coats, but she didn’t dare let the thing out of her sight. If it didn’t stay where she could see it, it could be anywhere.

Wake up, she told herself. Wake up, Joy!

The eyes narrowed. The claw reappeared and thumped dully against the glass. Once. Twice.